Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

What an evil weekend.

Saturday rushed past as I decomposed infront of the TV. Every minute that passed inaudibly mocked me for still not tidying up my house and washing the plates festering in my sink. My house wept tears of dust and lint, begging me to clean it next Saturday. I nodded grudgingly.

On Sunday I attended the village sports festival. This would be the last one until next year. The whole village attends and competes, grouped according to the part of the village that you live in. This meant I would stand around aimlessly, staring at the mess of kanji and numbers that they called a schedule, feigning a sense of understanding (hand to chin, with serious expression) until someone called me to compete.

“Gaijin-san, you run now!”

“uh ok. Running? I just ran in the last race”

“ah last race very fast, well done! Run again!”

Despite my obvious limping and the fact that with every race my swiftness diminished considerably, they were ruthless in their authority. My body had been rudely awoken from its usual dormant state, and it didn’t like it. After about the 6th run, as if hearing my silent prayer, the heavens opened and it started to really piss down with rain. The choruses of “zan nen desu ne!” (that’s a shame) from the swarming masses contrasted distinctively with my panting mutter of “thank Christ for that”. The sports day was over and we all went home.

I peeled the soaking clothes from my body and looked forward to an action-packed afternoon of sitting down. “Ding Dong”, chirped the doorbell. I opened the door whilst half naked to find a whole family gawking back at me. After a few seconds of stunned silence with my nipples becoming embarrassingly hard due to the cold, they invited me to come and eat with them. Seeing as my lunch was probably going to consist of MSG-flavoured instant noodles, I willingly agreed.

I only have vague memories of the 3 hours after this point.

All the families from my area of the village had gathered in a community hall. We ate civilly from the colourful bento platter laid out infront of us, while exchanging the usual harmless banter that accompanies such events. Then the alcohol started to flow. What began as simple topping-up of each other’s beer glasses soon became wanton force-feeding of sake and shochu. Even the old ladies were getting in on the orgy of booze, shuffling shitfaced around the room clutching bottles of sake and collapsing with a grin infront of randomly chosen drinking-partners. The children fashioned exciting cocktails from various combinations of beer, shochu, sake and grape juice, and beckoned me to drink, whilst hitting me with pokemon toys. Sitting with a group of amiable 20-somethings, our conversations turned from football, cars and favorite foods to dribbling repartee concerning penis-size, pornography and foreign women.

It took me about 10 minutes to stagger the 300 metres back to my house. I plonked myself down on the sofa and stared at the blank screen of my TV. The TV remained motionless but everything else in the room span around it. I let myself orbit the TV for a few cycles then decided it was time to visit the toilet, where I was violently sick.

My broken body made its way back to the living room. I looked at the clock. It was 2:30pm.

You have to love Japan.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 7th, 2002 at 2:24 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.